Bobby Orr

Never mind that Bobby Orr seems to have been portrayed in this 1970 Yardley ad as a goaltender; what’s important here is the fresh feel, and why he likes it. Three years later, with illustration and haircut both updated, he’d still be endorsing it — here.

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Born on a Saturday of this date in 1948 in Parry Sound, Ontario, Bobby Orr turns 71 today. The photo here dates to 1969-70, a year in which he turned 22, scored 33 goals and 120 points, and won Art Ross, Hart, Norris, and Lou Marsh trophies — oh, and a Stanley Cup. Here’s Herbert Warren Wind, why not, on Orr’s virtuosity from a 1971 New Yorker profile:

While he is an aggressive, physical young man who never backs off from a scrap, he is essentially a cool, self-possessed player in whom instinct and ratiocination are in perfect balance. If he frequently appears to control the puck — and the game — three-quarters of the time he is on the ice, this is to be credited principally to his outrageous sense of anticipation: he gives the impression of knowing not only what every player is doing at that precise moment but also what every player is thinking of doing in the next moment. There is no better skater in the game, but what makes Orr especially difficult to contain is that his speed, like [Gordie] Howe’s, is extremely deceptive. He has about five different forward gears and a couple of reverse ones, and he can shift from one to another without appearing to change his languid stride. He also has the full thesaurus of slippery moves.

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Bobby Orr turns 70 today, even now, as we’re talking, so what’s important, I think, is to hear what Gordie Howe had to say about him in 1971, rendered (sort of) as a poem.

Howe was 43 back then, Orr 23, and what Maclean’s thought might be a good idea was to get each of them to argue how great the other guy was. Howe had just retired from the Detroit Red Wings that spring, 25 after he’d started with them on the wing; he was still a couple of years away from making his return with the WHA’s Houston Aeros. Orr was in his sixth NHL season. He’d won Hart and Norris trophies earlier that year while racking up the best offensive numbers of his wonderful career, finishing second in league scoring to teammate Phil Esposito. Orr’s knees still had, at this point, about six-and-a-half hockey seasons left in them.

“Eulogies For Each Other” Maclean’s called their feature, which offered up side-by-side first-person odes. Orr’s to Howe calls him a fantastic hockey player and an amazing guy. It includes an obligatory anecdote of meeting Number 9 on the ice and receiving a first lesson, i.e. a good shot.“He was a tough son of a moose,” Orr says, not to mention “the finest athlete of them all” — in any sport. “I mean you can’t say anything. The guy has got to be the greatest. He’s still the greatest.”

As for Howe on Orr, here he’s what he had to say in 1971, condensed and (why not) poemized:

He was just a snotty-nosed kid
when I first met him.
Maybe 13 years old.
We were visiting
a summer camp
near Parry Sound
and somebody said,
“Watch this kid,
he’s going to be a great one.”
It couldn’t have been
closer
to the truth.

The thing
that amazes me
is his quickness.
Because of that quickness
any move he makes
has got to be exceptional.

I talk to
Bill Quackenbush
who is in Boston
and who sees Bobby
day after day
and I guess
he does things
that just
pop your eyes out.
Any time you play
against him
you’re aware
of his talent.
It’s not only
his puck control.
With that quickness,
plus the ability
to walk around anybody,
and that heavy shot —
and I think he’s got
one of the
better shots
in hockey —
he’s got everything
going for him.
And he doesn’t
make mistakes —
and how can you
improve on that?

You have to chase him
because if you don’t
he’ll kill you.

Let’s face it, he’s the thinking power.

Bobby is a puck
control artist
and whenever
you get a control artist
you’re going to draw
a lot of hits.
What I like about him is
that he’s man enough
that he can take it,
almost to the point
where he sets himself up
and just as he’s
about to get hit
he’ll get
the pass away
and maybe
set up
a three-on-one
break.

I guess Bobby is
no different
from a lot of athletes
— every now
and then
they like
to take the shirt
and tie off
and get back
in the wilderness
and catch a few fish.

Bobby is a great kid.
The whole Howe family
admires him.
I hope
he
never
changes.

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Wall of Fame: Bucyks and Brodas, Keons and Keiths, Selannes and Sittlers. Ottawa artist Tony Harris has been painting for a year now to depict each of the players (Bobby Orr, above, included) deemed the greatest in NHL history, and last week we put the finishing touches on Yvan Cournoyer and Wayne Gretzky, the final two of his 100 11 x 14 oil-on-paper portraits. Today through Sunday, as part of the NHL’s centennial celebrations, they’ll all be on show, together for the first time, at Montreal’s historic Windsor Station. (Image courtesy Tony Harris)

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Pat Quinn was a coach and a manager and a hockey co-owner and the tributes continue to mount following news of his death a week ago in Vancouver at the age of 71. If you’ve seen them, you’ll know that he was a straight-shooting cigar-chomping golden-hearted remarkable-CV’d guy’s guy old-school big-presenced Hamiltonian ornery Irishman larger-than-life goofy-grandfatherish intimidating great-story-telling three-piece-suited unconventional level-headed adaptable keeping-it-simple father-figurely high-acumened gruff-exteriored kindly personality’d news-conference-maestro hockey-beauty-loving square-jawed much-respected fine-broth-of-a-lad time-for-everyone-even-the-Zamboni-driver well-educated charismatic legendary Hibernian lion whip-smart could-have-done-anything-in-his-life heart-on-sleeve Gordie-Howe-idolizing player-trusting sarcastic not-a-detail-freak smart-cookie winner who left his indelible mark on the game and everyone who met him.

You’ll have heard, too, if you hadn’t before of a famous hit of his, when he was a defenceman in 1969 for the Toronto Maple Leafs. That’s been getting a lot of ink; here’s more.

Quinn’s active-NHLer adjectives included bruising, fearsome, give-it-his-all, tough, no-nonsense and not-afraid-of-a-good-fight. But while he may have played 617 NHL games over nine seasons for three teams, scoring 18 goals and 132 points while incurring 971 minutes of penalty punishment, but mostly the memorializing distills all that into the several seconds it took him to cross forty(ish) feet to desolate Bobby Orr with a bodycheck.

It was the first game of the playoffs, early April, in Boston. A crushing hit, CBC.ca was recalling last week, that rendered Orr unconscious. The Globe and Mail ran a photo of what it looked like the moment after the two men fell.

You have back up, though. To tell the story. March 15, nine games to go in the season, Boston came to Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs were battling Detroit for the final playoff spot in the NHL’s Eastern Division while the Bruins were sitting 14 points ahead, safely in second. They were a scoring juggernaut. The team was about to set an NHL record for goalscoring in a season. Headed for a scoring title, Phil Esposito already had more points than anyone ever had in the league. And Orr was close to setting a new record for points by a defenceman.

But the Bruins were slumping. That’s what GM Milt Schmidt said. Coach Harry Sinden had injuries to contend with, ailing goalies in Gerry Cheevers and Eddie Johnston and a pair of limping Eddies, Shack and Westfall. Plus Boston hadn’t won in Toronto since 1965, 21 games ago, back when Orr was still skating for the Oshawa Generals.

And the Leafs did prevail, 7-4. Walloped was a word Louis Cauz used in The Globe and Mail. Toronto played it rough. Bruce Gamble played great in the Leaf net. Well, once they went down 3-1 he did. After that, as Toronto came roaring back, Gamble shone. Ron Ellis scored a couple of goals to — what’s the word? — pace the Leafs. Toronto was Ellis-paced.

Oh, and high sticks. There were those, too, and several elbows, and sundry punches. Those contributed something, I’m thinking. Or didn’t. Anyway, a 26-year-old Pat Quinn was involved in a lot of this. Towards the end of the first period, he and Boston’s Don Awrey exchanged … glances? funny faces? fuck-yous? The Boston Globe called it potential squaring off. I guess the linesmen intervened before the two players got any squares off and while:

Brent Casselman was restraining Quinn, the big youngster pushed the official around quite enthusiastically.

In another report, he shook Casselman. Coach Sinden preferred tossed him around. The Bruins couldn’t believe he wasn’t ejected from the game and summarily suspended, which was had happened to Esposito earlier in the year when he manhandled a referee: two games. But Quinn got away with an elbowing minor.

In the third, Bobby Orr was in front of the Toronto net when Gamble made a save and Quinn was there to charge him head first into the sidebar (Boston Globe, March 16) or cross-check him into the Leaf goalposts (Toronto Star, March 17) or run him into the crossbar (Boston Globe, March 17) and Orr wrestled Quinn to the ice after the two had traded punches (Star, March 17) or tipped over his larger opponent (Boston Globe, March 16) and (also) Quinn kicked Bobby a few times in the process(Boston Globe, March 17).

That was the Saturday night. Sunday, St. Patrick’s Day, the two teams met again in Boston. The crowd chanted “We want Quinn” and possibly “Kill Quinn,” but they were disappointed: he didn’t play let alone get murdered. His groin was, well, pulled, and after skating pre-game he withdrew from the line-up. Without him, Toronto lost 11-3. Esposito had five points. Derek Sanderson scored a hattrick — or I guess notched.

“I was eating my heart out not to be out there,” Quinn told The Globe and Mail. “I’ve never wanted to play in a game as much as that one.” Continue reading →

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Paying The Price: Bobby Orr checks himself out of hospital in 1966, after treatment for strained knee ligaments.(“Here Comes Bobby Orr” 1971)

Bobby Orr’s been showing his knees as he’s been making his way around the interview circuit this week to talk about Orr: My Story, the autobiography he wrote with the help of Vern Stenlund.

It was no surprise when CBC’s cameras hovered over Orr’s scars on the national news on Monday: his many surgeries define his hockey career as much as any of his trophies or statistics. He told Peter Mansbridge that doctors have gone in 19 times over the years (both knees) — though in an interview in The National Post published Wednesday, Joe O’Connor suggested that they’ve all been on the left side, and that Orr himself can’t be sure of the exact number, only that it’s somewhere between 17 and 21.

The Post played a big photo of the knee that George Plimpton once said looked like a bag of handkerchieves. Montreal’s Gazette crowned it “the most famous knee in hockey medical history” — O’Connor notches it up to “the most famous knee on the planet.” Either way, Orr is feeling “spry.”

“Everything else hurts on my body,” he was saying, “but my knees feel great. I will do hockey clinics, but I skate real slowly, and I would never play again. I am afraid of hurting myself. I am 66, not 26.”

A look back through the annals at the optimism, guarded and otherwise, that has attended Orr’s tortured joints over the years:

• People, March, 1978:

After the most recent surgery in April 1977, doctors benched him for a year. The surgeon performing that operation said the chances were one in 10 that Bobby would play again.

Despite those odds, Orr insists that “the knee feels good” as he settles back with wife Peggy in the family room of their ranch house. Darren is in the kitchen devouring Sesame Street and spaghetti, and 1-year-old Brent gurgles in a walker. “The knee is strong,” Orr says. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. It doesn’t buckle. But inside there’s just bone on bone, no cartilage left, nothing to absorb shock. Little pieces of bone break off and float through the joint.” His wife pales at the description and turns her face. “Sometimes you can hear them when I walk.” Continue reading →

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From Greystone Books. Available in bookstores in Canada and the United States. 2014 Hockey Book of the Year, as per www.hockeybookreviews.com. "Funny, smart, unlike any hockey book I've read," Dave Bidini has said; "Joycean," Charles Foran called it. "It’s rare to find a book that makes me proud to be Canadian," is what Michael Winter wrote: "A funny, myth-busting, life-loving read."

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poem

Thankful that I never
played against
Wayne Gretzky
in an NHL playoff series;
I probably would have had to break his hand.

I would not have wanted to injure Gretzky, mind you;
I loved the guy.
I never touched him on the ice
in a regular season game.
I had too much respect
for how he played
and how he carried himself.

But I can say without question
I would have tried to hurt him
if we had been matched up
in the playoffs.
In my mind,
there are no friends
in a playoff series

I’m not talking about
elbowing someone in the head
or going after someone’s knees.
I’m talking about a strategic slash.
To me, slashing someone’s hand or breaking someone’s fingers was nothing.
It was part of the game.

Broken hands heal.
Fingers heal.
The pain that comes from losing does not.